From April 18 to 20, 2022 the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg hosted the successful 2nd International Scientific Conference "Light in Museum".
The three-day conference, which was held in the General Staff Building and the State Hermitage Depository, was attended by 195 participants in person and 150 online, including representatives of museums, restoration organizations, manufacturers of lighting equipment, scientific and research organizations, educational institutions, lighting designers and planners. This year the conference was held in a "hybrid format" and many participants, including those from abroad, were able to take part online.
During the conference, leading Russian and foreign experts discussed the current state and prospects for the development of the museum lighting environment, approaches to the lighting of museum, exhibition and restoration spaces, the impact of light on exhibits, as well as the implementation of the tasks set by the first conference in 2018, including the developed standards in the field of museum lighting.
S.V. Kirienko, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, A.D. Beglov, Governor of St. Petersburg, B.V. Gryzlov, Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Republic of Belarus, D.I. Azarov, Governor of Samara Region, and others sent their greetings to the conference participants. The Head of Rosstandart A.P. Shalaev, the President of the International Commission on Illumination CIE Peter Blattner and the Chairman of Lux Pacifica, Professor Motoharu Takao made a video address during the grand opening of the conference.
The conference program included more than 30 presentations by representatives of the museum and lighting engineering communities and invited Russian and foreign experts. Among them were Deputy Director for Operations of the State Hermitage Museum, A.V. Bogdanov ("Actual issues of museum lighting"), the Chairman of the Lighting Technical Council, G.V. Boos ("Lighting in museums as a priority development of lighting technology"), the Chairman of Lux Pacifica, Professor Motoharu Takao ("Psychophysiological approaches to human centric lighting"), Deputy Director of Funds, the State Historical Museum M.V. Chistyakova ("Light and Museum. Interaction between museum specialists and lighting engineering’s as the urgent need in museum practice"), President of the National Academy of Design Yuri Nazarov ("Light in museum compositions. Search of new forms") and other specialists from museum and lighting industry. The speeches of the representatives of design organizations presented a number of examples of original approaches to the illumination of museum spaces and exhibits, which aroused the interest of the audience.
Special attention of the scientific program of the conference was dedicated to the lighting of restoration spaces and workplaces - these issues were covered in the reports of the Head of the Technological Department of the Russian Museum, Sergey Sirro with the Key engineer Vladimir Toropov “Prospects for the use of LED UV lights in the restoration process” and the Head of the Department of scientific and methodological work and exposition activities of All-Russia Grabar Art Restoration Centre in Moscow, Elena Prokhanova "Lighting in restoration workshops: current problems and solutions".
On the second day of the conference a master class on museum lighting was organized under the guidance of the editor-in-chief of the journal "Lighting Engineering" V.P. Budak, in which artistic approaches and modern technical means of creating museum lighting environment and designing of lighting installations in museums were presented. As part of the master class were the General Director of "Faros-Alef" L.G. Novakovsky, Professor, Head of the Department of "Media Design" at the Moscow State Academy of Arts and Industry. С. G. Stroganov E.A. Zaeva-Burdonskaya and the Assistant of the chair "Lighting Engineering" of the National Research University "MPEI" D.N. Makarov.
The third day of the conference was entirely devoted to the cultural program organized by the State Hermitage: conference participants had the opportunity to visit the main museum complex of the Hermitage, the exhibitions of the General Staff Building, the Storage Facility, and the A.D. Menshikov Palace.
The organizing committee and the organizers of the conference would like to thank all speakers, participants, partners and sponsors for their attention to the important issues of interaction between museum and lighting professional communities, for their joint work in discussing and searching solutions to the most topical problems in lighting museums and museum values!
The conference was organized by the State Hermitage Museum, the Russian National Committee of the International Commission on Illumination, Scientific and Technical Council "Lighting Engineering" and VNISI Russian Lighting Research Institute named after S.I. Vavilov.
The conference was supported by the Ministry of Energy of Russian Federation, ILC "BL GROUP", ICOM Russia, the Union of Museums of Russia and "Brightelec" company.
Sponsors of the conference were the companies Aledo, Zumtobel Group, Tochka opory, ERCO and Candela.
If you have any questions about the conference, you can contact the organizing committee by e-mail at info@cie-russia.ru .
Video of the conference presentations will be published on our website shortly
